Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

m.nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 523 posts

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#311

Post by Trav5 »

Trav5 wrote: post #132
tribune wrote: post #34

I've been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this. I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there's a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful. I can compare this to the couple of tim…

I got a smart watch so I could stop carrying my phone everywhere. (Gear s3 with a cell modem) Due to idiosyncrasies in how it works, I'm now stuck with both!

Idiosyncrasies is the wrong word.

The problem is that the watch is dependent on the phone for notifications. If the phone is off the watch will not get notifications for Gmail or Google Voice. I can setup the regular mail client but the I get the Primary, Social, and Updates Inbox from gmail instead of just the primary inbox. Google voice notifications do not come at all so i miss text messages to my google voice number which is my primary/public phone number. The workaround would be to port my number back to the carrier and use the carrier for SMS/Text messages.

ATT has number sync so calls to the watch and phone will hit each other, but it is not as smooth as you would hope and gets disconnected sometimes.

Battery life is much better using bluetooth than wifi or cell connection.

Just lots of little issues that are a pain to try to work around.

My goal was for me to have access to my important notifications but not have my phone "at hand" to tempt me.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#312

Post by krisdol »

For anyone interested in further study of media's relationship to psychology and sociology, I cannot recommend enough Marshall Macluhan's writings and lectures. He may have been the first to argue that media is an extension of the human brain. Specifically, look up "The medium is the message" for videos of his central argument, or read "Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man".

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#313

Post by asteli »

free_everybody wrote: post #256

Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min tot…

I nuked my Facebook entirely. I don't miss it. Took about 2 weeks to stop reflexively typing in "fa" in the address bar when bored.

Everyone worries about event discovery and getting invited to things. Turns out, the people that you actually care about (and who care about you) will tell you regardless.

Additionally, I suspect that I'm influencing my social circle toward using email for event coordination. Facebook's only selling point is the network, universal buy-in. When you break that, even in a small way, the value drops significantly.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#314

Post by QasimK »

unholiness wrote: post #86

I personally haven't found the same effect in long-form media, such as: - Non-fiction books - University-centered online courses - Documentaries - Some of Netflix's original programs - Wikipedia's monthly news summaries - The "Great Courses" on Audible These media aren't thoroughly monetized on a pay-per-attention-stolen model. They're more optimized around having good reviews from friends and online. It makes me won…

I think there is almost always very little value in up-to-the-minute news - I find that it just doesn’t affect my life on a minute-to-minute basis.

Blender is an example of (supposedly) higher quality, longer pieces of (paid) news/reports. I haven’t tried it myself because they don’t allow pluses “+” in emails.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#315

Post by ucaetano »

kunimu wrote: post #253
ucaetano wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not only is Marxism-Leninism not the only form of Socialist praxis (neither is Marxism the only Socialist theory for that matter), but it's unwise to dismiss "failures" for the reason that they were authoritarian. I'm dismissing failures because every single time it ended in bloody dictatorships, but no, This Time It Will Be Different®. No, it won't. Funny how you talk about learning with the failures of history, b…

>but no, This Time It Will Be Different®. Why do you think strawman thought-terminating cliches are an acceptable level of discourse? At best they serve to be distracting and needlessly hostile. >but you keep insisting in trying again a system that again and again has proven itself to be horrible. Not really; have you heard of Badiou's concept of the Communist Hypothesis? His argument is that Socialism, well, Communi…

> Why do you think strawman thought-terminating cliches are an acceptable level of discourse? At best they serve to be distracting and needlessly hostile.

But that's the essence of your argument. You are proposing to try again something that 100% of the times led to bloody dictatorships, claiming that this time it will be different due to some vague, hand-wavy reason.

> "Shifting value" is a very strange way of saying that developing countries are being systematically exploited due to the low cost of labour because they have almost no training.

Yeah, millions being moved out of poverty is the same as "exploited".

> So did the feudal system, and in fact so did the Soviet system (which I do not by any means support).

No. Unless one of those systems did something like removing 50% of the world population from extreme poverty in half a century. Neither did. Not only that, the Soviet system purposefully murdered millions. And the key word here is "purposefully". Every system results in deaths, the Soviet (and all socialists) fall into a special category where death is part of the governing process. See Holodomor. Killing Fields. Etc.

> So can Socialism.

I'll say "maybe" to give you the benefit of the doubt, but do we need to kill millions again to find out based on your "hunch"? No, thank you very much.

> as Marx put it

And you keep citing Marx as if he is a reasonable source, that puzzles me. He's long dead, just as his economic theories. Keep them dead.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#316

Post by drdrey »

jmcgough wrote: post #302
xster wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate media like NYT and WashPo etc that writes things like you must be crazy to not believe there are WMDs in Iraq are not serious news sites. Rich != serious. And hegemonic news smearing all sources of independent journalism and grassroot progressive political movements is just about the opposite of the point of this article.

Like them or not, the NYT and WashPo do some of the best, factual investigative journalism in the world. Have they been wrong? Sure. But they have extremely high standards for publishing a story, so you can generally assume that they're accurate. They also are the ones who break a lot of the biggest, most impactful stories. I think a better criticism of them would be wash po turning a blind eye to Bezos and others th…

And when they make factual errors, they publish errata

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#318

Post by warent »

asteli wrote: post #313
free_everybody wrote: post #256

Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min tot…

I nuked my Facebook entirely. I don't miss it. Took about 2 weeks to stop reflexively typing in "fa" in the address bar when bored. Everyone worries about event discovery and getting invited to things. Turns out, the people that you actually care about (and who care about you) will tell you regardless. Additionally, I suspect that I'm influencing my social circle toward using email for event coordination. Facebook's…

Yes, I've noticed this disturbing trend myself. I'm ashamed to admit there's been more than one time that I've closed Facebook, opened a new tab, and immediately navigated to Facebook. Of course, I take full personal responsibility for my behaviors, but this is definitely the result of intentional unconscious conditioning; it's made this way by design.

Now I use the "News Feed Eradicator" Chrome extension and no longer have that problem :)

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#319

Post by rorykoehler »

jmcgough wrote: post #302
xster wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate media like NYT and WashPo etc that writes things like you must be crazy to not believe there are WMDs in Iraq are not serious news sites. Rich != serious. And hegemonic news smearing all sources of independent journalism and grassroot progressive political movements is just about the opposite of the point of this article.

Like them or not, the NYT and WashPo do some of the best, factual investigative journalism in the world. Have they been wrong? Sure. But they have extremely high standards for publishing a story, so you can generally assume that they're accurate. They also are the ones who break a lot of the biggest, most impactful stories. I think a better criticism of them would be wash po turning a blind eye to Bezos and others th…

They practice the worst type of disinformation. Correct most of the time but when it really counts they publish incorrect propaganda (eg wmds in Iraq).

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#320

Post by iamcasen »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #161
JepZ wrote: post #18

> Choice is such a messy thing to dive deep into, because then you realize that nobody knows what it means to choose. Actually, I think I do know what it means, but I have the feeling that many people do not like the idea, that their decisions are based on past experiences and that their free will is actually just the evaluation of their perceptions (of their truth) and therefore, it is nothing that comes from some s…

Choosing means: a) evaluating multiple possible outcomes b) selecting from those the outcome with the highest desired value c) taking the action with increases the likelihood of the desired outcome That's it, end of story. No "spiritual nonsense" necessary. This definition lines up with human intuition, and it also applies to determinstic things like machines. For example, Using this definition we can say things like…

you're completely forgetting to include "access to perfect information"

Which is the whole point of propaganda and other forms of marketing: bombard people with a message, true or false, it doesn't matter. Over time people will come to believe the message, and it will inform their future choices. People do not have the time to evaluate in depth all of the information they receive on a daily basis, and therefore are not actually capable of making truly rational choices.

Everyone is merely doing their best, and many are indeed failing. At some point, humans have to rely on trust. In our current society, that is extremely difficult.

Post reply on HN